Cold Comfort

I have been pissed off for several years. This is not good for me, I know this. But it doesn't seem that I can do anything about it. About the time my gallery fired me, IBM fired my husband. I promised him that I would not go public with his experience, but all this has made me very angry. If you're over 55, you are vulnerable to some very hard times. Everyone over 50 that I know has lost their job, or is in danger of losing their job. This age group will not publicly talk about this, because they are ashamed of their status and being vocal about this abuse will probably not get these people work.

You can count on it.

I live in North Carolina, a Right To Work and Employment-At-Will State , which is basically bullshit double talk for discouraging the formations of unions. This means no collective bargaining in the work place, and therefore little or no protection for workers . That's why people die or suffer severe injuries in the workplace in NC. In my state, employers can fire an employee for any reason it sees fit, or no reason at all. It can assign employees demeaning tasks with impunity. NC and all southern states and many western states fall in this category. However, there are protected Federal civil rights categories, such as age, race, sex religion, etc. that cannot be abridged. But proving age discrimination in the workplace is like snow boarding in July on Nutella. in 2009, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2009 ruled that workers must bear the full burden of proving that their age was the cause of their demotion or firing. And that's why so many older workers are losing their jobs. Ba Da Bing.

I used to paint medieval landscapes, with oblique social commentary. I used to write about art. I stopped caring about these things because I was so pissed off and despondent about how fucking unfair things had become. We all sat around and watched while the wealthiest Americans got a lot richer, and the middle class got fucked and feathered. Starve the Beast worked, huge tax cuts has basically hobbled the gov's ability to support social programs for the middle class.

Okay, are you listening to Rebel Belle?

What's come out of this is a new body of work based on corporate greed and the nihilism of those who govern. I've been making this stuff that makes me feel a whole lot better. I've been going into my studio and cutting shit up, pasting, gluing, in a happy, drunken frenzy.

So don't feel too bad about me. I'm having a fucking blast with these fuckers. And selling every one I make.

XXOO

Heading Towards Bongonomics

It was a long time ago that I would have thought that a kleptocracy was a weird and wacky economic system of government with a self crowned and anointed despot like Idi Imin. And recently, in some far distant galaxy of a third world universe people lived and died under an Oligarch such as Omar Bongo, deceased autocrat and chief CEO of Gabon. You know the story; plunder the resources of one's country, cheat the starving citizens, play polo with their heads on an emerald sea of turf. Have a martini with your BFs.

This last weekend I was in LA., a city which only a couple of weeks ago had people line up for the services of Remote Area Medical, an organization which has it's headquarters in Tennessee. Their constituents have historically been the most desperately poor and isolated in the rural areas of Appalachia. But now in LA and other large metropolitan areas, the recently uninsured, the under-insured, the unemployed and the highly educated are seeking out these services. My brother can no longer afford health insurance, my friends who are artists can no longer afford health insurance. To usurp a battle cry from the enemy camp, I want my freaking country back. Remember the days when you were a kid and had your tonsils out? Or broke your leg while riding your bike? Did your parent have to get a home equity loan to pay the medical bills?

I don't care a shit why this has all changed. But I can tell you one thing; greed is a constant theme. The wealth from the middle class has been extracted and transferred over to the rich since the Bush days.. Okay, you know that shit. Excuse me for preaching to the choir. I am pissed, pissed, pissed.

Well, I have some ideas.

I think it's time to look at resources currently available to us, and third world countries are way ahead of us in adapting to declining circumstances. There are lots of people in the U.S. that have lost their jobs and their homes, so I think a reframing of the idea of community is in order. I suggest that like Venezuela, Gabon, and Tanzania we move people closer to the new work places. Temporary accommodations could be set up near land fill sites, utilizing found materials. I'm sure Andrea Zittel in her Institute of Investigative Living could design site specific living units of a work/live nature. The resources inherent in landfills environments have up to now been relegated to the few and the desperate. I can envision entire communities living and working by recycling societies flotsam and jetsam. I suggested this to my brother, who is looking for machine parts to re-engineer. I haven't heard back from him.

How about encouraging more folks to assume greater personal responsibility for their well being? I've traveled all over the world, and was most impressed by the initiative and professionalism of the Baksheesh beggars in Morocco, the persistence of street vendors in India and Bali, and Union Square. Of course this all needs a PR spin, maybe we could call this new profession urban consulting.

And if we are lacking for more ideas, we can always look to Jonathan Swift and his Modest Proposal. Mario Batali or Rachel Ray can create a new cookbook, "How to serve the unemployed". Tony Bourdain can air it on No Reservations. And after, Andrew Zimmern, the guy who will eat anything can review it.

Love
Rebel Belle

Read "Em and Weep"

As the old saying goes, "read 'em and weep". Many of us were grabbing our hankies on Sunday, when Dorothy Spears of the New York Times showed the crappy hand dealt to New York art galleries. The whispering campaign of pain in the art marketplace rose to a roar, but no one was surprised by it, and some, like myself tried to rise above the usual Schadenfreuden glee. Yes, some porcine people in this industry deserved to go down in flames and maybe things got way out of control, what with all the ridiculous auction prices and crappy spin paintings. The sizzle lasted five years and seems to be spiraling down in a sad, miserable slow thud. It's not dead, but it's time for some serious reshuffling, this time without the jokers.

I know a lot of the gallerists mentioned in this article, and it really seemed personal. I've had lots of conversations with some of them, and even in flush times this business is as shaky as pigs on ice. This is a very tough profession, and very few survive. Okay, you know all that. But besides calling in the Ghostbusters, what cha gonna do? Well, I've taken matters in my own hand. As you well know, things around my house are kind of spooky so I've taken to watching creepy movies, like Alive: The Andes Incident, to cheer me up. You know that one I'm talking about. A Uruguayan Rugby Team crashes in the Andes and they go cannibal to survive. They hike out through the Andes and are ultimately rescued. I love a happy ending. Jane Austen used to really do it for me, but right now, I'm not feeling the love for Mr. Darcy.

Well, at least things are not so bad that we're digging up our backyard pets for dinner. That's something.

But back to basics. What is everyone out there doing to survive? In Dorothy Spear's piece, she mentioned different strategies that galleries are taking. One of them was the production and sale of inexpensive multiples by Compound Editions, a SchroRo, Winkleman endeavor. Now that really cheered me up! I've been doing that for awhile, always feeling like a leper at Tiffany's. This practice saved my butt this year, but I've felt very ambivalent about it. I actually like doing it, I like it when people who never have bought any art feel that's it's possible for them to start a collection. But it never felt legitimate, which is of course ridiculous. Felix Gonzales-Torres settled that for us once and for all. Art for The People Baby. This is a good thing, really it is.

Slashing prices? No, I'm not doing that. It's a bad thing to do to your collectors. The galleries might be doing it, but probably with works that were heavily inflated in the first place. I wonder how much Damien Hirst's diamond skull is worth now? Or all those lame Jeff Koons hearts and bows? And Murakami Louis Vuitton bags I can get cheap on Canal Street.

So what are you doing to keep your place at the table? No bullshit.

Love,
Rebel Belle

Well Shut My Mouth

Welcome to Raleigh, NC, a town that is bound and determined to rewrite the country mile and call it Paris. Folks who live here have a lot to say about it's metro area . We are especially loquacious when it comes to the subject of revenuers, especially the guys in blue which continue to perpetrate the myth of the Southern Speed Trap. I'm sure you saw the movie Deliverance, which all northerners claim to be an accurate portrayal of life below the Mason Dixon Line. I have always thought of the Southern Speed Trap as a folksy, kind of quaint folk lore, which has been reputed to deliver a mess 'o misery to no-count sorry fereigners.

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, if Raleigh doesn't have it's own little slice of heaven under the overhead ramp on South McDowell Street. This is a major gateway to the metro area, all gussied up with some very fine landscaping, such as crepe myrtles, day lilies, magnolias, and all types of serious horticulture. But directly across from an uber shiny new city signpost, sits a a very special individual who's busier than a one-legged man at a butt kickin' contest.

Welcome to Raleigh, y'all. Fuck you, here's a ticket and have a nice day!

I don't think a June bug gets as much as a stiff breeze down there it's so safe and quiet. The last time I got a ticket there for being stupider than a Yankee picking cotton, the police officer asked me if I had anything to say. "Well officer, I might could opine my thoughts here, if I were fixin' to spend some quality time in the local lockup getting my nails and hair done. Or I reckon I could just git on home and kick your stupid redneck ass in my dreams, so don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

Yes, welcome to Speed Trap Raleigh. Old habits die hard. According to the National Motorists Association, Raleigh takes the top nod for speed traps in North Carolina. This is a city that is trying hard to be a player in a cosmopolitan world, but don't it just beat all that it behaves more like a herd of turtles on molasses than a groom that showed up for the wedding. Raleigh is a funny town, for a long time there weren't much open past midnight but legs and beer. Now it's much, much improved. We actually have a good downtown. So Mr. Mayor, why the stupid speed trap? Is the city that broke? We could shit fire and save matches too.

For a northerner to live in the south, and one from the multicultural mecca of the polyglot, it is a supremely weird experience. Yes, I know... enough already with the complaining. I thought about this a lot, and realized that kvetching is my birthright and a genetic directive. As my father used to say about republicans, " A trolley car should run over your tuchas and make you shit out transfers. "

I still haven't figured out why people down here always say let's have lunch and never do it.

I guess that's not too different than NYC.
They're like two cheeks on an ass, the only thing they have in common is a fart.

Kish mir en tuchas, baby!

Love,

Rebel Belle

The Event I Planned

I'm really loving the event planning tool on Facebook. It's brilliantly easy. What can I say except that the two little geeks that dreamed up this whole FB thing are really down with the world's electronic zeitgeist. (The "Send a Douche Bag" Ap is bitchin'. Thanks! You know I'm talking about you!) When someone with a famous gallery sends me a douche bag, I'm beyond flattered, and maybe a little hopeful. And maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful and lasting friendship. If I were better at promoting myself, I would leverage this into something big, but I'm going to stop right now because I think I'm on the road to fucking up my career yet again. I'm going to keep this all light and sunny and apologize to anyone out there who I have offended or will offend in the future.

Yikes, what a digression. I know I've been totally unreliable here on Tire Shop, posting whenever I damn feel like it, and being a tad sarcastic when I actually write anything. I apologize for this. I've been a real buzz kill. So from now on, you will see a new me; breezier, lighter, less use of really inappropriate language such as fucking asshole, dick, cunt, shithead, and other unhelpful terms. Oh you say, "I've heard this before, empty promises"! But I realize that using this tone of voice is not helping anyone, and I don't want to end up like, OMG, Maureen Dowd. And let me tell you; Maureen's, colleague, Gail Collins is well on her way of carrying the mantle of the bitchy razor wielding women at the New York Times. I wonder if they're friends with Roberta Smith? I can tell you right now that women like them don't get invited to baby showers too often.

And why are we still in Iraq when the Taliban are seventy miles from Islamabad and ownership of a nuclear weapon? I guess protecting oil and military honor is more important than protecting world safety. Am I the only person out there that is just a wee bit concerned? Yeah, I'm Jewish and see everything in the filter of a coming death march, but WTF? (ooops. My bad.)

But back to my FB event. I get invitations to at least 10 of these a day. And why not my own? So I put together a nice little mixer, inviting all the artists in my hood that I never get to see because my career is more important than theirs and that's why they need to come to MY place. So a few people came, and it was a fucking wake, for sure. (oooooops again!) Since I'm hoping to sell everything I make, and what I haven't made yet, this was really a downer. So the economy sucks donkey dong, so no one hasn't sold anything in four months, so no one can afford health insurance, so my husband doesn't have a real job, so none of the artists I know are trained to do anything but make some useless unsaleable stuff, so shut the fuck up with our whiny selves.!!!!!! Yesterday, my clown outfit did not cheer anyone up, so I decided that we should all get together and sing a chorus of "Tomorrow"!

The sun'll come out

Tomorrow

Bet your bottom dollar

That tomorrow

There'll be sun!

Just thinkin' about

Tomorrow

Clears away the cobwebs,

And the sorrow

'Til there's none!

When I'm stuck a day
That's gray,

And lonely,

I just stick out my chin

And Grin,

And Say,

Oh!

The sun'll come out

Tomorrow

So ya gotta hang on

'Til tomorrow

Come what may

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow!

I love ya

Tomorrow!

You're always

A day

A way!

Have a free beer from my kegerator.

And Bill or Andre, it will be your turn to wear the clown suit next.

Love,

Rebel Belle

What makes Rebel Belle such a bitch?

Kathleen Gilje
48 portraits, Sargent's Women

Sometimes Rebel Belle feels remorseful about her big fat mouth. She knows it is not politik to be so critical of an industry that she hopes will sustain and support her. And worse, she even notices that her Friend Requests on Facebook are being denied a lot more now because she has alienated some of her fellow colleagues. Because she is a woman, she takes this personally. A guy would act more appropriately, like just go out and get wasted, or have sex in a back alley. For her, a new lipstick or pair of shoes sometimes helps, but now she is in a whole new territory where a new blush won't help. She is not sure what she needs. She will ponder over this. She doesn't really know why she pissed some people off, when in fact she needs a little love.

Her point is that because of her gender and her history, she tends to incriminate herself for her unfortunate outbursts of negativity. She should probably count to ten before posting. She also notices that there are consequences for being such a bitch. She's not making any new friends in the art establishments that she hopes will elevate her to stardom. She wishes that they would understand that she is just kidding! C'mon, she doesn't really mean that some gallerists are blood sucking necrotic Madoffs who would sell their mothers down the river for an MFA grad from Yale? Oh please, she thinks that such comments are ridiculous hyperbole even though she may have said them. And she still smarts from Charlie Finch's remark about her being a bastard out of Carolina. Oh, Charlie, that was really uncalled for. Rebel Belle says let bygones be bygones, even though you titled your piece on Kathleen Gilje's new show Breast Milk and lamely linked it to new art pornography. Belle doesn't think its such a new trope. She won't even supply a hyperlink to this article on Artnet because she knows that her readers are smart enough to find it on their own. Let it be a kind of Find Waldo.
Fun!!!

Belle has confided in me that she is really very insecure and sensitive, hence all the mean snarkyness. This is no excuse however. There are better and more productive ways to get a point across. She knows that there are many wonderful, honest people in this business and, she should focus her attention on all the good deeds that she is failing to recognize. But that would be boring, and anyway, for good deeds we have Guggenheims, MacArthurs and minimal security prisons.

Rebel Belle would feel much better if she got a piece of the action. As it stands, she feels minimalized and discounted. Her ambitions have been thwarted, and her bitterness is only to be expected. She has thought about becoming a Buddhist, and letting go of all worldly desire, chanting her way back to serenity. This would be a good thing I've told her, but Belle would only consider this AFTER she's gotten payback from the art world. Then she could let go of all her disappointments and rage.

Sobriety is a great thing, but only after the last drink.

Love


Nancy

Amuse Bouche

I've been depressed for two years. But the recent collapse of the art world has really cheered me up, and in my current state of exquisite schadenfreude, I can say I TOLD YOU SO. Well, actually I wasn't the only one to forecast this hellish debacle. I think that a lot of other folks knew too. Let me rephrase that; everyone who was breathing, eating and sipping their lattes had a very definite clue that the End Was Near. I know how cheesy and creepy it seems to be enjoying the collapse of my own industry, but I like to think that I'm not actually ENJOYING this. It's more like witnessing a spectacularly gory train wreck and being grateful I got off the train before the last stop. Okay, you always see through me anyway, so I'll come clean. I'm lying. I'm enjoying it.

I was especially titillated by the story of Annie Leibovitz, who eschewed galleries in favor of marketing her own work in her Chelsea Studio. When I first heard about this, I thought Way To Go Girl. However, a recent front page story regarding Ms. Leibovitz made me wonder about her fiscal intelligence. She recently hocked everything she owns and even pawned the right to her lifes work to pay off her loan to Art Capital Group. She used three Manhattan town houses and another residence in Rhinebeck NY, as collateral to secure the loan of 15 million dollars.

That's harsh dude.

In a story last week in The New York Times, That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop , I learned that Julian Schnabel, poster boy for humility, also has partaken of the same services of pawnbroker for the rich. He financed the austere and modest Palazzo Chupi in the West Village through Art Capital. I know his neighbors on West 11th Street must be delighted with his pretty in pink little amuse bouche. Schnabel is now in litigation with the company over fee disputes. Schnabel is sad old news, but yet he continues to climb a ladder of monumental grossness. I'm mesmerized by his narcissistic creepiness. These people don't live on the same planet as us. Yes, I know, we've always had art royalty, but gimme a break! At least the Medici's helped produced something worthwhile. I would like to throw in the likes of Murakami, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney, and all the other silly ass artists that imprint sheets and hand bags with their "brand" to this cauldron of mediocrity. Showmanship is cool, I'll admit that, but history will be the great leveler of who's who and who's not. So let the big clean up begin.

Artists will have to think about actually making something interesting now that the money balloon has deflated and sunk to the bottom of the well. Do I sound bitter? Rebel Belle is always pissed off at something, and I've been disgusted at all the recent MFA grads who thought that they had an instant career that would support them for life. This shit had to stop. It was getting so bad that you couldn't distinguish between a gallery and a high end furniture store. Artists were confused, following the same career path as actors in LA, hoping to make it big so they too, could have their Pallazo Chupi.

Wake up and let the revolution begin. I'm sick of all those 25 year old boys out there getting instant fame and recognition. Those galleries that support this crap need to close.

Love,
Rebel Belle